For a brief moment back there, I thought Labour had a chance to reconnect with the power supply of the British public. The jolt of Brexit had energised politics; half the country was distraught and desperate for effective opposition; and people at every level of our party recognised a responsibility to bring Jeremy Corbyn’s experimental retro-70s leadership to a swift end.

But in the weeks that followed, we went back to talking to ourselves about ourselves, as the public turned away in disgust. Supporters of Corbyn plot to complete their project to change the party – not transform the country – with threats to deselect MPs. His opponents whine that too many people are voting in leadership elections and obsess over procedural manoeuvres to thwart them.

The solution is not to paper over the cracks, “get the band back together” or to concoct a face-saving formula allowing MPs to resume their shadow cabinet careers serving a man in whom they have declared no confidence.

Instead, we need to find an honest, dignified way of opening our party and our thinking up to the millions of voters worried about the future of our economy, democracy and country.

MPs who refuse to sit on the frontbench do not need to sit around moaning about Corbyn nor limit their ambition to avoiding deselection. They should organise within the PLP a 2020 group to do the hard policy work needed if Labour is ever to form a government again. Far too much mainstream Labour policy thinking is as trapped in the 1990s as Corbyn is trapped in the 1970s. So we need to reapply our values to the modern challenges of a global, digital world, where the populist right is on the march.

The 2020 group should launch properly-funded policy commissions on subjects ranging from migration to the changing nature of work, with findings published before next year’s conference. This will give MPs a serious platform for necessary debate that is not interpreted purely through the prism of parliamentary plotting against the leadership.

Indeed, the best – perhaps only – way to remove Corbyn is by fighting on the same set of rules he has exploited so successfully. That means signing up more members than Momentum. Those who want the chance to be leader in the future need to earn it by beginning a national campaign to sign up half a million mainstream Labour members over the next two years.

It is no small task. But I do not understand how almost an entire generation of mainstream Labour MPs can throw their hands up in horror at the prospect of trying to recruit more members than a far-left fringe that has just emerged from the woods. Presumably, they went into politics because they felt they had some skill in winning support. Now is the time they need to demonstrate such talents by expanding, not shrinking, the selectorate.

Tom Baldwin is a former director of communications and strategy at the Labour party